


Bills To Pay, Mouths To Feed

by grasssea



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Noir, Detective Noir, Gen, Not So Sweet But Very Short, Short & Sweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-16
Updated: 2018-01-16
Packaged: 2018-10-05 23:50:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 17,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10320386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grasssea/pseuds/grasssea
Summary: "Noir AU. Chloe is the tough as nails detective who knocks back a shot in her darkened office as sharply dressed homme fatale Lucifer Morningstar bursts into her office with danger in his eyes and a plea on his lips. She knows this fella is trouble, but damn her, she can’t help but take the case."





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Based off of a short AU idea I had on tumblr (mazethequeen.tumblr.com) that a few people asked me to continue. It was a fun chance to try to write that quintessential private eye monologue. I don't think I got it quite right, but it was interesting to try.

It was a cloudy Monday, and a slow day for work right until Lucifer Morningstar walked into my office wreathed in smoke and sin, and put out his cigarette in the homemade ashtray next to the door. He seemed to bring the clouds with him, and he smelled like the air right before a storm. We weren’t forecasted for lightning, but at that moment I swore I saw the electricity arcing off of him. He wore a hundred watt smile and Armani. A rich boy, trouble if I ever saw it. 

I leaned back in my chair and looked him over. “The door says knock, sir. I could have been with a client.”

He smirked, cocky bastard. “They wouldn’t have minded. You’re detective Decker, aren’t you? I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“All good things, I’m sure,” I shot right back. People didn’t like me much, but they couldn’t deny that I did my job. I got results, even if they weren’t always the results they came looking for, and I always got my guy. 

My father would have said that pride always came before a fall, but I was a fired cop. I couldn’t fall much farther without the help of a pit. 

Morningstar flopped into the chair in front of my desk. He didn’t sit, he lounged, like some sort of cat. One of the ones with teeth like daggers and eyes that glowed in the dark, beautiful and dangerous and probably about to get shot. His smile revealed even white teeth, human but still sharp. Everyone forgot that man was the apex predator these days. “They said you were the best. They didn’t say you were beautiful too.”

I folded my arms across my chest. “Cut to the chase Mr…?”

“Morningstar, Lucifer Morningstar,” he supplied helpfully. 

What a name. I snorted and continued. “Well, Mr. Morningstar, I’d appreciate it if you’d restrict your comments to ones pertinent to your case from now on. I work for…” I surveyed his outfit again, appraising the linen with an amateur's eye. In this city you learned how to spot wealth fast. “A hundred dollars an hour, and that’s better than you’ll get anywhere else. I work until there’s nothing left to turn up, and I want a deposit up front. I don’t do Saturdays, Tuesday nights, or school mornings Monday to Wednesday.”

That had lost me a lot of clients, but Trixie came first. She deserved better than a mother with an office on the seedy side of town who came home from work smelling like steel and death. I was determined to give it to her. 

His brow wrinkled, but he accepted it without any further comment. “Very well. In return I expect you to keep quiet about this. Discretion is of the utmost importance.”

“Are you guilty of any major crimes that I need to know of?” I asked him. This was the most important part. No one in Los Angeles was innocent of everything, but I had to have some standards. Murderers and their ilk would have no help from me. Embezzlers and small time thieves were judged case by case. I wasn’t inclined to give Mr. Morningstar much leeway. He looked arrogant, sounded obnoxiously British, and had a face that would make anyone act rash. Cheekbones like that deserved some sort of warning; “Keep away from children and easily influenced souls”. 

“Sodomy, adultery, solicitation of almost everything and possession of more drugs than you could name, darling.” he answered, looking like the cat that got into the creamery. He was so damn proud of himself it made the mind wonder what could have him keeping secrets. 

I mulled it over. A hundred dollars an hour was good money, and Trixie ate like a starving dog these days, and was growing faster than I could keep her in clothes. 

Morningstar must have sense my reluctance, because he dug deep in his pockets and pulled out more a botanical garden worth of green. Neatly folded notes were pushed across my desk toward me, and I realized it was all one hundreds. 

Hells with it, I could deal with the repercussions later. For now I had lawyers bills to pay, rent due next week, and a little girl to keep fed on a single salary. I took the money, counted it out, made a note of it in my book, and fixed Lucifer Morningstar with a solid stare. 

“It seems we’re in business, Mr. Morningstar. What do you want?”

To my surprise he didn’t jump to spill out his woes. Something had been eating him since he came in the door, I could feel it in my bones like a sailor could sense the wind changing, but he kept his anxious energy held tight to his skin, a storm in a devilishly attractive bottle. 

He leaned in, dark eyes fixed on mine, smiling softly. “Not yet. I’m sure you don’t mind, but I need something over you first. Insurance, let’s call it. So, Chloe Decker, investigator extraordinaire, what do _ you _ want? What is your deepest desire?"   


Hypnotist's eyes stayed locked on me, and he seemed so honestly confident that I just stared for a minute. Then the shock faded and I stood, chair crashing to the floor behind me. It had been half off at a liquidation sale, and it had the balance of a one-legged elephant. Morningstar started at the noise, and whatever spell he was trying to case broke.

“I don’t know what sort of corporate power-play mumbo-jumbo that was,” I told him, stepping around my desk and a snowfall of discarded paperwork on the floor, “But it stops now. You want my help, you play by my rules, and that means no trying to charm me. I’m a professional, not a snake. Play your little games on your own time, Morningstar, not mine.”

He stood too and somehow managed to not loom despite the handful of inches he had on me. His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat, drawing attention to the line of his neck and the muscles that became his shoulders. I realized with an ache how long it had been since Dan. It was a damn shame, my dead ex was a dirty cop and here I was staring at a man probably wore a cologne called  _ Disreputable _ . Fortune smiled on me, he was too confused that his failure to notice. 

“I’m sorry, did that not work? Do you have contacts in or something? Do you want me to try again?”

“Yes, none of your business, and no.” I growled, and wished I was the sort of person who could work with a fifth of brandy in them. Half the other PIs on the strip drank like fishes, but I’d never gotten in the habit. It made you too sloppy, too confident, and besides it was as much a cliche as the trench coat. Maybe it worked for bestubbled boys who’d grown up on pulp novels and B-movies, but someone had to be the adult in the room. “Look, just tell me your case so I can solve it. I have a reputation to keep up, and frankly I want you out of my office as soon as possible.”

Morningstar considered me carefully, eyes roaming over my face and only stopping to rest on my bare legs for a second. Maybe getting out from behind the desk after a day working customer harassment freelance wasn’t the best idea. Despite first impressions, he wasn’t the leering type. Instead he just… smiled. A more impressionable person might have called it ‘cheeky’, I just called it frustrating. 

“You really weren’t affected, were you?” he said, soft like the rumble of thunder from the horizon. Everything about him reminded me of a hurricane. I’d lived in sunny LA all my life, and this was an education in storms. 

“If by affected you mean, ‘ready to throw you out’, then yes, I’d say I am.”

“Peculiar,” he whispered, then shook his head and righted himself. “Well, maybe it will prove useful here. You see, I’ve lost something of unspeakable value.”

If it was a woman, I was going to shoot him myself. I prodded the ambiguous mass he had laid before me cautiously. “What exactly did you lose?”

He sucked in a breath, exhaled low, and said with forced casualness, “Only my angel wings.”

Well, that confirmed what I’d suspected since he walked in. This was going to be one of  _ those  _ cases. I probably needed to demand more money up front. In the meantime, I righted my chair, sat back down, and popped a migraine pill. 

“Explain it from the top.” I told him. 

“Well, it all started when I fell from heaven….”

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for all the lovely comments on chapter one! This is probably going to be a three parter, to really establish the universe and hopefully answer some questions, but things are still going to be very open ended.

 

“This is the one?” the woman Lucifer had introduced as  _ Maze _ demanded. She was undeniably gorgeous with eyes like ink, flawless fawn skin, and the toned muscles of a fighter or a dancer. Her sour expression and the way her eyes went to my belt and coat pockets when I entered suggested the former. 

There was something unsettling about her beauty, like looking at a bird of prey eating. It was in her posture, she held herself with all the grace and self assurance of an eagle, sharpened claws ready. She fit the seedy bar we were in, the infamous Lux, like she had risen fully formed from it’s depths. She and Lucifer matched in that way. It was impossible to imagine either of them as children. 

I slid my hand into my pockets and let the reassuring outline of my tazer comfort me. In the dimness of the afternoon-quiet club it was all too easy to imagine things going south. 

Morningstar nodded. “Yes, this is Chloe Decker. She’s a private investigator who’s agreed to help us with our _ little situation _ . Linda recommended a pair of human eyes.” At least he had the sense to not scream “angel wings” to everyone who passed. Maybe he was cleverer than I’d given him credit for. 

Grudging acceptance spread over Maze’s face. “If you think she can help. Are you taking her to the warehouse?” 

Lucifer smiled rather than answer. “Would you like to come with us?”   


“Mmmm, I’ll pass. I’ll go follow up on the Russian lead.” Maze said, giving me another once over. She stepped in suddenly, until we were hip to hip, and slid one hand into my coat to rest on my weapon. Her smirk as I jolted back reminded me of the Grinch. It had too many dimensions, twisted in too far to be natural. “Not a pushover then. Good luck with your human, Lucifer,” she said walked off without a glance back. 

If all his associates acted like this I was going to start charging him for emotional stress and life insurance. Looking at the understated elegance of his business, I figured he could afford it. There was a small but determined group of drinkers with expensive watches at the bar, even though it was only half past two. 

“Sorry about Maze,” Lucifer said with another charming smile. I almost wished one of his people would start scowling, just for the novelty value. False smiles were far worse than real anger. At least then you knew what you were up against. “She’s been stressed. Let me grab the keys to my good car and we’ll leave, shall we?”

“It’s your money we’re wasting waiting around,” I told him, “Your call."

As he mosied over to the stairs I checked my watch surreptitiously. Trixie’s after school program didn’t end until six, plenty of time for me to start this investigation. The sooner it was over the happier I was going to be. Morningstar and his associate were too pretty to trust. The beautiful ones always had the worst secrets, and if they were admitting to being the devil and company who knew what they were keeping quiet. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


There was crime scene tape at the warehouse.  I had to quell my instinctive reaction of relief. I was no longer with them, their presence didn’t bode well for me anymore.    
  
Lucifer waited patiently as I drew in a few steadying breaths. 

“What happened here?”

“Some poor man got himself murdered. Very sad, but I think the police already shut the case, and I didn’t want to report my theft because… well… it’s not the most legal of warehouses.”

There were still bloodstains on the cement. I stepped over the tattered police lines carefully and prodded them with the eraser of a pencil. “You don’t say,”

They were drier than hell, which lined up with Lucifer’s description of the crime. I poked around for any other clues, but came up empty. 

“We should follow the money trail. Find out who owns the  warehouse and who might have a grudge against them. These docks are gang territory, and there’s always little disputes. Your property might have just gotten caught in the crossfire.” I couldn’t bring myself to say angel wings. It was just too strange. 

“Maze and I interrogated the owner of the business,” he volunteered as he stared at the empty space in the rows of shipping containers. “We didn’t get very far.”

Damn it. That was one option limited then. It was looking more and more like I was going to have to call in the big guns. 

“I’ll talk to the police,” I said finally, grudgingly. “See if there are any leads on that end. A few people there still talk to me.”

They talked to John Decker’s daughter, at least. Chloe Decker, whose husband had showed up dead next to a drug dealer with a pound of opioids on him, who had tried to blame it on a respeced, popular officer, she wasn’t very hot at the moment. Older cops made an allowance for John Decker’s kid though. 

Questions flickered over Morningstar’s face but he somehow kept quiet, a first in the hours since we’d met. 

“Splendid!” He skipped over the police line to join me, and hovered as I checked out the rest of the building, looking in vain for even a sliver of a hint. Something started to prey on his mind halfway through the inspection, and I told him to spit it out. 

“You see, Chloe- can I call you that?”

“Please don’t.”

“Ms. Decker then. It strikes me that if you’re going to be looking into this matter for an extended period of time, you might come in contact with some of my past. So, fair warning, if you’re approached by a tall man- dark skinned, wears a sort of atrocious grey dress- named Amenadiel, stay away from him. He’s my brother and an absolute bore and he wants me to go home, and he might use you to achieve that. He can’t hurt you but it would be best to avoid him anyways.”

Amenadiel. It sounded like a name out of a fantasy novel. More pieces to the puzzle “I’ll keep that in mind,” I promised, and made a note in my notebook. At the very least a family feud might help determine who had stolen as esoteric an item as ‘angel wings’. 

As if prompted by the message of family, my phone buzzed with an alert. Mother’s intuition kicked in before I could fully read the message and my stomach fell like a piano off a skyscraper. Trixie, why?

“Damn it, damn it. Sorry about this, Mr. Morningstar but I’ve got to go I have to pick up my-” another dull and painful realization hit me, the piano thumping down. He'd insisted on driving, since the people at the warehouse knew him. “Aaaannd my car is still at your club, Jesus, Mary and Joseph.”

It was something Dan used to say, a phrase I’d only begun to use after his death. Lucifer recoiled a little, showing more dedication to his role than some professional actors, and I made a mental note to avoid overt religious phrases around him. 

Then, with surprising generosity, he said, “I could drive you, wherever it is you need to go, have someone bring your car by as well.”

I deliberated for a moment before rationality won out. I needed to get halfway across the city as fast as possible or I’d have a lot more to worry about than Lucifer. Trixie’s veritable menu of after school programs were the only thing keeping me in a job, I needed the afternoons and evenings. 

“I’d appreciate that,” I managed, then added compulsively, “As long as it’s not too much trouble.”

“Not at all,” he purred, “You are doing a favour for me, after all. It’s only fair to return it.”

Favour, case, we could argue semantics later. Right now I wanted to find my daughter before she punched another fifth grader in the face. I’d learned the hard way that sometimes fighting lost you everything, and she didn’t need to until she was a little older. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


I left Lucifer in the car as I hurried inside, past throngs of children and their harried parents or nannies. Even after hours, the elementary school was full of life. It was in the sort of neighbourhood where everyone worked full time, and childcare was negotiated in between business deals and movie shoots. A good school district, but a demanding one. 

When I left the office to gather up Trixie I found her sitting with Lucifer. His patience had lasted less time than I’d hoped. 

He waved cheerily. “Detective, I found your offspring.”

“Mommy,” Trixie whispered, “He’s the devil.”

The clouds of earlier had cleared up, and now it was all sunshine and the judgemental faces of administrative workers. 

I sighed. “That’s debatable. I see you’ve met Mommy’s new client.” I usually worked hard to keep her away from well, my work, but after Palmetto she’d grown more careful, had started insisting on knowing where I was going and what I was doing. I couldn’t blame her for that. She’d been through a lot. 

With any luck, I could keep Lucifer from becoming one of the things ruining her childhood. All I needed to do was track down a pair of giant, feathered wings that“glowed with the divine light of god”. 

Easy peasy. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hi! This fic is officially running long, and I rather suspect I'm losing the voice, but I suppose these are the mistakes ou make with your first longer story. Thanks for hanging in there.

  
  
  


I discovered over the next week that Lucifer Morningstar was, if nothing else, tenacious. We went out for drinks, to talk about the case. We went to see his therapist, to talk about the case, on the grounds that she sometimes had “the most delightfully insightful of thoughts, that’s how I hired you, detective.” Dr. Martin, a candidate for beatification if I ever met one, had taken this rant with only a little weariness. Could you get a sainthood for Devil Handling?

He was getting antsy, and I still had no leads. You didn’t need to be a PI to detect that wasn’t a recipe for client success. 

Meanwhile, I had other clients to keep satisfied. Rich young women looking for evidence their boyfriends were cheating on them, low level pushers and shovers on the LA scene trying to get an extra edge with information. People searching for closure, for an opening. People looking to be disappointed. Letting them down easy wasn’t easy work. 

On a stakeout waiting for some poor sod’s affianced to get out of work, Lucifer called me again. I contemplated hanging up, but knew from experience that would just pique his interest. Besides, no one questioned a woman in a minivan wearing yoga pants and talking on her phone. Being able to go undercover had its perks. 

“Decker,” I answered, not tearing my eyes away from the entrance of the the building. 

Lucifer’s voice bubbled out of the phone speakers, sticky like toffee and somewhat marred by the loud club music in the background. “Detective! Just calling to check up on you. Maze and I have just had an absolutely disappointing evening.”

I checked the time just in case, but no, it was still the same. “It’s four in the afternoon,” I pointed out, raising my voice a little in case he could hear me over the strident beats of what was almost certainly Lux. The club was called Light, but it was anything but. The shadows had shadows there, and sound ate its way into your skull. Every time I visited I left with the clinging feeling that I needed to take a shower and an STD test. 

“We started early,” he claimed, “Something about birds and worms. It was nonsense, because we’re no closer to our goal. I wanted to see if you had any new leads. Swing by Lux, we can have a drink and talk about it.”

A familiar red head exited the building and made for his car. I put Lucifer on speaker phone, thankful Trixie wasn’t with me. It was bad enough that I had to take her to work with me at time, when babysitters fell through or a client got especially persistent. Even worse, she liked it, or at least the parts of it that involved “catching bad guys”. She’d taken to Lucifer entirely too well. I needed to keep them separate, before her dreams got crushed. 

“I’m afraid I don’t have anything else to tell you right now. This process can take time. I have contacts who still haven’t gotten back to me, avenues I’m still exploring. I promise, you’ll be the first to know if there’s news.” It was a fancy way of saying I had bunk. He was a fancy man, he deserved the icing. 

As Lucifer chewed on that, I accelerated to the stop light at the nearest intersection and waited for my mark to come out of the parking garage, hoping I’d timed it right. 

Luck was on my side, or at least someone was. I trailed him down the road and listened to the Devil’s charm, strained as it was. 

“You should come down to Lux anyways, Maze and I would love to see you. We could tell you about the Russian lead, perhaps there might be some dancing. I think Maze is still wearing her swimsuit, and frankly I could use something to take my mind off of things.”

In my rearview mirror, my target put on his turn signals and swerved off the highway twenty miles away from his exit to home. I swore and made a quick turn to follow him, hoping it wasn’t too obvious. Few people suspected being tailed by someone in front of them, but on the other hand LA attracted paranoid personalities like Lucifer attracted attention. That was to say, intentionally and gleefully. 

“Detective?” The polite query was just a little too sharp for comfort. Maybe it was the pop music static, harsh against my ears. Occasionally a word like “body” or “hot” would surface from the din, always in the same sultry whisper. I didn’t mind popular music, but the speaker phone remix wasn’t doing top forty hits any favours. 

“Sorry, Lucifer, I’m kind of busy right now.” Calling him Mr. Morningstar just felt strange. He didn’t have a respectable bone in his body. A mister was a shiny coat of paint over a wall of graffiti. You saw right through it. 

He reacted like Trixie did when she couldn’t get something she wanted, except that I hoped I’d at least taught Trixie some manners. His pouts were audible, but so was the calculation underneath. “I thought you said you didn’t have any leads.”

“I don’t, this is for my other work.”

My mark, now in front of me, was headed towards a rundown little stripmall, dingy in the sunlight, it’s cheap stucco walls peeling already. Two restaurants, a small boutique, and a sketchy looking massage parlour. Amateur adultery hour it was then. I pulled into a shoulder by the side of the road, trying not to be too conspicuous. 

“Oh. Well, when you’re done. Come by Lux. We’ll see if we can take the weight of the day off your shoulders, dear.” There was something insistent about his flirtations, which had been building over the past week, and I’d pretty much had enough of it. My teeth ground together a few times, the frustration bubbling, until quickly it spilled over. 

It did so… rather dramatically. I tried to keep my temper in check, but Lucifer was infuriating. 

“Will you please, for the love of god, shut up? My husband died a year ago. I appreciate that you want this job done, but you need to back off or I will drop your case. Boundaries are important, and I don’t know what sort of alternate universe you live in, but in this one people we’re working with deserve some basic respect. I do not now and nor will I ever want to sleep with you, or for that matter, Mazikeen. End of story.”

Beats blasted faintly as I resisted the urge to pump on the gas and drive away angrily. Dramatic impulses didn’t get the job done. Already I had lost sight of the man I was trailing, although it wouldn’t be too hard to find his car in the parking lot. 

Aside from the insistent sound of dance music and the rush of traffic outside, it was quiet. Then, Lucifer surprised theologians and psychologists alike, and me most of all. He apologized. 

“I’m sorry about your spouse. I didn’t know. You have to understand, humans are usually… drawn to me.”

“I’m sure they are,” I told him, drier than a smokehouse. 

“You aren’t and in this stressful situation that feels rather significant. I thought it might be important somehow.”

What had he thought, he could sleep with me and it would all click into place? Screw your PI to unlock a secret level of investigation? A redhead in a suit flashed into my line of sight for a second. To my surprise, he made not for the massage parlour but the little boutique store on the corner. The instant of distraction was enough to make me forgive Lucifer, if only so he would get off my phone. 

“That’s messed up in several ways, but as long as you stop, I’m willing to let it slide. I have to go now. I’ll call you as soon as I have any news about your case.”

“Thank you,” he said, suddenly the voice of gentility. I hung up fast, before things could get complicated again. He was a conversational eel. Things got slippery. You thought you were talking about one thing, only to find yourself talking about another. Like an eel, he was also good at tying himself in knots. 

Then, I went to figure out why a recently married banker was visiting some place called Sweetpeas and Sweeties, which judging by the sign, in fact sold articles of clothing. You never could tell with places like that. Usually they were run by older, half washed up actresses or retired stage moms, and sold semi-precious fifty dollar jewelry and sundresses. I personally believed they’d make a perfect small scale money laundering fronts, but I’d never personally busted one so perhaps that was just a personal grudge against overpriced sunglasses coming through. 

The door was glass, pink swirling plastic decals over half of it. The same bubbling powder pink approximations of vines curled around the edges of the shallow display windows, which held a few forlorn mannequins posing like their lives depended on it in maxi skirts and chic tops. They were barely even bothering to hide the lines of the hair ties that pulled stretch fabric tight around plastic bodies. 

I window shopped carefully for a few minutes, looking for onlookers and camera, then peered through the door into the shop itself. Inside, a young woman with short dark hair and long lashed eyes was leaning over the counter and smiling up at Ginger Suit. You didn’t need to be an expert to read the body language. Flirtation was occurring, the question now was if it was serious. 

As if to solve all my problems at once, the man leaned in and started trying to eat her face off, with all the passion and most importantly, confidence, of a long time paramour. All the suction-y, clingy glory of even the most cuddly of cephalopods had nothing on a human being who needed to get home to their significant other within the hour. You’d almost have thought he was trying to make my job easier. The lovebirds were thoroughly occupied so I pulled out my phone and snapped a few, quick pictures, flash off. (That wasn’t a mistake you made twice.)

Someone tapped me on the shoulder. 

I spun, hand going for where I had once carried a gun and now just had a taser and a prayer. The man standing behind me was built like a fighter, but wasn’t standing like one and he had a bureaucrat's face. “Long suffering” was written all over it.

The door behind me creaked threateningly, the barest hint of a bell jingle warning me away. Rather than interrupt the happy couple, I sidestepped and pressed my back into the more solid display window. The narrow shelf with its school photo backdrop was accessible from inside the store, but there wasn’t line of sight. It was a little safer. With at least six feet of well muscled man looming over me, there wasn’t a lot of safety to be had.

“Are you Chloe Decker?” he asked, in a soft voice that nevertheless did little to assuage my fears. 

“That depends, who are you?” 

I kept moving to the side, away from the store and the people I definitely did not want knowing my name. With some distance between us, I could now see that he was wearing a long grey coat, textured strangely, which fit his torso like a glove and fell to his feet. His arms were bare. 

Some bizarre warning of Lucifer’s, one I’d barely paid attention to at the time, suddenly came back to me. One about an individual I needed to avoid. 

“Chloe Decker, you were hired by Lucifer Morningstar, weren’t you? He asked you to find something he lost, something very important.”

This stranger didn’t seem overly hostile, and we were out in the open. I took a chance, rested my hands on my hips in an impression of nonchalance, and smiled more cheerfully than a waitress working for tips who owed rent yesterday. 

“I’m afraid I can’t disclose any details about clients, but I am Chloe Decker, private investigator.” It was the sort of thing that sounded ridiculous when you said it in daylight, or for that matter most brightly lit shades of night. The trick was to deliver it with confidence, not my forte but I had taken acting lessons for years. “What can I do for you, Mr….?”

His stern demeanor softened even more in the face of sheer politeness. There was still something unsettling about him, a liquid brightness to the eyes that was eerily familiar, an unsettling magnetism to his beauty. Like Lucifer, looking at him felt a little like stepping out of the glare and shadows of interrogation and seeing sunlight again for the first time in hours. A little revelation, as if existence had grown a bit brighter again. 

“I’m Amenadiel,” he said, and slowly pieces started to click into place. “I’m Lucifer’s brother. I… have a similar interest in what he’s looking for.”

_ The goddamn angel wings _ , my brain supplied helpfully. I nodded, mild and noncommittal. 

“I was wondering if you could be convinced to help me find them before he did.” Amenadiel, whose parents had clearly decided to go all or nothing but had only been able to name one child Lucifer, smiled a charming, altogether too familiar smile. “I could make it worth your while.”

I stared at him for a while. The sun, already low in the sky and placed solidly behind him, made it difficult. The end effect was an entirely religious one, fitting I supposed, given that he was almost certainly looking for the same twisted religious heirloom as his brother. 

“No,” I said, finally. “No, I’m afraid I can’t do that. I have a reputation to protect, and frankly you don’t seem any better than he does. I’d rather not hitch my wagon to either of these horses, and I’m certainly not going to let word get out that I’m a double crosser. You know, your brother warned me about you.”

The idea of them being brothers itself was ridiculous. They had entirely different accents. Still, I supposed the world was full of all sorts of people. Some of them wandered around in long robes accosting innocent detectives about angels. 

Amenadiel sighed, “And what did Luci say?”

Luci. That was ridiculous enough on it’s own. The fondness and exasperation in his voice was even stranger. 

“He said you wanted him to go home, and he seemed to hate the thought of that.” I shrugged. “Now, he doesn’t seem like the best decision maker either, but there’s got to be a reason for that.”

“There is,” Amenadiel informed me, lip curling. “It’s because he’s reckless and selfish. I’ll find you when you want to change your mind, Ms. Decker.”

By backing up step by step, I had almost reached my car. That was no guarantee of safety, however it did make me feel secure enough to shout after him, “It’s Detective Decker!”

Once I was certain he was gone, I slumped against the door of the rental car and exhaled. 

What the hell was wrong with that family?  _ Other _ than hell, that was. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing season one characters is so hard after that excellent finale. They don't trust each other, much less love each other, and they're not really good people yet, which is sad. Be nicer to each other, darlings.

 

I was making lunch for my daughter the next morning when I got the call from old Jose. He’d been one of my dad’s colleagues and partners, was in the space between active duty and a restful retirement where they stashed you in a spare office at the precinct. He had two kids on the force. Policing ran in families. It was like a disease that way. 

“Chloe,” he said, “What have you gotten yourself into?”

Reflexively, I picked back up the bread knife and held it in one hand. Before Dan’s death a weapon had never made me feel safer. Now, it was like a comfort blanket, a small way to hold back the storm. When you had a badge, the law was your weapon. Once it was taken away, you had to improvise. I preferred words to violence, but anything would do in a pinch. 

“Nothing I can’t handle,” I told him sternly. Patronizing old beat cops who remembered me from back when I wore tutus were nothing new. Becoming a detective had been some small respite from them, but now I was back at the bottom, grabbing any tip I could from anyone I could, and retired cops were the worst gossips in town. “I’m assuming this is about my inquiries?”

I’d been poking around for word about the theft and murder at the warehouse, about the gang wars, about anything to do with smuggling of religious items, since my first conversation with Lucifer. 

“Did you ask someone to put out an all points on angel wings?” Jose asked, sounding out the words like he’d never seen them before even though I knew he went to church once in awhile. 

I squeezed my eyes shut. 

When I opened them, the problem hadn’t gone away but Trixie had looked up from her breakfast and gave me a curious look.  _ Get dressed _ , I mouthed, and hoped she could successfully navigate her closet on her own, preferably without going to school dressed in three clashing types of plaid again. At this point in the journey of parenthood, I wasn’t picky though. I’d had it Trixied out of me. 

“Not in so many words,” I said, once she was gone and I was left with a half made peanut butter and banana sandwich in front of me. The banana slices were already going mushy and brown. “I asked if anyone had heard about them recently though, especially in relation to fenced goods or black market deal. It’s for a client, and since the theft is related to an unsolved murder I thought it might be of some interest to the force.”

Words were their own sort of weapon I mused in the silence that followed. The early morning light streaming through the kitchen window in hazy golden bars made even the quiet drifting and gentle, at least until I tucked the phone between my ear and shoulder and got back to lunch making. 

“Well someone must have thought it was funny enough to put out a warning for,” Jose said finally, “And they got a hit. Monroe wants to talk to you, Chloe.”

My old supervisor. This was looking more and more like a screaming warning sign, the sort of alert that came up on TV when you were about to get a hurricane. I didn’t want to see her again, didn’t want to go to the station and get dirty looks and even more snide comments. I certainly didn’t want to know what sort of hit had pinged for angel wings. It probably wasn’t even a real lead. 

Regardless, I knew I couldn’t refuse. I sighed, “Thanks for the warning, Jose. Hope you and Carol are doing well, bye.”

I hung up before he could say anything else and got back to lunch foods. Already, the baby carrots in the bottom of the fridge were looking sadder than a would be actress after her twelfth casting call. An apple would have to do. 

Lucifer would have made a very bad biblical joke by this point, which was why I was definitely not bringing him to meet Olivia. He could be clued in after the fact. 

Really, when it came to investigations, the instigators of them came second to the truth. Once you had that, you could work around clients and their whims, without it, you were just a higher class of liar. 

_ There’s a right and there’s a wrong, monkey. You’ll know it when you see it, if you look hard enough and listen to the words people are saying _ . 

It hadn’t done my dad much good. Hadn’t done me any favours either. Depending on who you listened to, Dan had possibly gotten the short end of the stick there as well. That didn’t invalidate their existence though. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Detective!” Even sitting in the middle of the chaos of Lux, Lucifer still looked pleased to see me. I took a step back. Someone had taken a dive over the bar and broken glass littered the spirit soaked concrete floor. It smelled like every flavour of vodka at once. 

“Sorry about the mess,” he said, straightening his cuff links, “Maze got a bit frustrated earlier.”

“Should I come back later?” I offered, heart beating in my throat. It wasn’t an option. The information from the police station was too important. 

“No, no, I was just waiting for the cleaners, but I’m sure they can take care of it themselves. We can go upstairs, it’s quieter there.” The elevator was silent and smooth as a snake, and Lucifer was as well. He made even me feel clumsy, and I’d had decades of combat training and several years on the child pageant circuit. 

Upstairs, in the warm glow of his penthouse, it was a little brighter. You could tell it was daytime, at least. Lucifer poured us both a drink, which I didn’t touch, and smiled, “What’s the news then, Detective Decker?” The edginess that had defined him since we’d met was still there, but it seemed muted here, in his home. Underneath the warm lights, his gleaming piano behind him, he almost looked wholesome. 

I took a breath, and tried to lay out the facts in front of me neatly, like I was disassembling a gun and needed to know where every piece was. “I spoke with my contacts in the police department. Following the information you gave me, one of them put out an all points bulletin on “angel wings”. I, um, think they might have thought it was a joke. Either way, we got a hit. A black market auction being held in Los Angeles tonight. The feds are planning on raiding it and got a list of the wares that are expected to sell, so they were curious about why the local cops were poking in their business. The captain nearby had questions for me.”

“You found them?” Lucifer asked, utter delight shining on his face. For a second he looked heavenly. “Some criminal is trying to sell them then. Wait, why do you know the police?”

If he was one thing, it was distractible. If he was two things, they were distractible and self-centered.I changed the topic quickly. “Back to your wings. I got Olivia off my case about dealing with you-” That hadn’t been easy and was going to require significant follow up, but Mr. Morningstar didn’t need to know that, “But she was very clear about one thing. If we wanted to get them we’re going to have to do it the hard way. Once the raid is over we can make a request to get them back, provided you have proof of ownership. You do, don’t you?”

I’d done my job, I’d located the damn things. The look on Lucifer’s face shouldn’t have made me as worried as I was now. 

He leaned back against his bar, eyes shut, looking like Dan had when Trixie decided to eat an entire tube of chocolate icing. “If the federal government is involved, it’s going to get bad long before we get to paperwork,” he told her cryptically. 

“They’re stolen goods then?” I asked, just to get the verbal confirmation. 

“Of course not, they’re mine! They’ve been mine for ages. I haven’t got a whit of documentation to back it up, but they are. It doesn’t matter though. There’s enough divine power in those things to drive any human who looks at them too long mad. All those FBI agents in their sparkling tactical gear with their big overcompensatory guns are going to go over like dominoes. Those military types are useless and they do love a good higher power. A handful of criminals would be one thing, Sleazy Joe getting a fear of god in him isn’t going to hurt anyone. The government is another matter entirely.”

“Mmmmhmm,” I said, pretending that made sense, all the while filing the words away to process at a later date. “It’s not exactly a small operation selling them. This is a huge auction of antiquities and other ‘divine artifacts’. Lots of bigwigs from all around the globe. Swanky venue, full catering. I didn’t get the whole story, but it seemed pretty fancy.”

“Oh, even better,” Lucifer sighed. “Rich people with too much religion who got bored at Sothesbury’s and couldn’t lower themselves to Ebay.” Now he was in a full on rant. It felt like watching a modern Shakespearean villain monologue, right down to the sex jokes.

I sighed and put down my glass of brandy. Crystal clinked against marble. “Right, well if all you’re going to do is complain, I think my work here is done. Client frustrated, information delivered, that’s pretty much my job. Most of the information on the wings is written down in this file,” I slid it across the bar. “Also your scary brother came and accosted me yesterday. Do you want me to send the bill here, or….?” Ideally he’d pay me on the spot, but that made it hard to give a good accounting on my taxes. Cash versus check was a constant battle in my banking records. 

Lucifer froze faster than a deer in headlights, and probably out of the same, unshakeable misguided instincts. “You saw Amenadiel?”

“Yeah, he tracked me down in a strip mall parking lot and made some vague threats then insulted you. I told him I wasn’t willing to sell you out but frankly this case is getting a little weird.” For emphasis, I gestured at Lucifer’s whole set up, the carved wall of suspiciously ancient looking text near the bedroom, the ladies underwear underneath the couch, the suspicious assortment of implements hidden among the bar tools. Just because it had a more reputable atmosphere than Lux didn’t mean much. There were some public restrooms that felt more reputable than Lux. 

For once, he paused and seemed to engage in a split second of self reflection. “I recognize that this case has undoubtedly been hard for you, Ms. Decker. You have that very loud child of yours to worry about and probably lots of other annoying clients. Your efforts haven’t gone unnoticed. You got me an answer where no one else could…” Then it was gone, quicker than a nightmare upon waking. “However I’m afraid I might still need your assistance. Your puny human world is at stake.”

To use a phrase from Trixie’s parlance, it was time to blow this popsicle stand. “I’ll bill you,” I said shortly, and turned to go. Somehow, despite being at least two yards away, Lucifer grabbed my wrist. It was the faintest of grips, light to a fault, and only the fact that I was in his home prevented me from instinctively elbowing him in the face. The reflex returned, stronger, when I saw he had a knife in his hand. 

On a sliding scale of knives, this one was perhaps a two, edging out only butter knives and plastic knives in terms of lethality. It certainly hadn’t been made for hurting humans, or anything bigger than a pomelo. Bartenders knives were designed with celery sticks and lemons in mind. 

He was holding it towards himself, relatively non-threateningly, and I made myself relax. He was calm, and while that wasn’t a guarantee of anything it was good to match the demeanor of a person you were trying to talk down. If worst came to worst, I could always tazer him. 

I’d known something was going to go terribly wrong the second he walked in my office looking like sin had a child with an Armani model, but having to pull on my hostage negotiation training hadn’t been on my top ten lists of ways it could end. 

“Look, you’re the only one who’s been able to do anything so far and you clearly have some in with the police force, so I do need your help for just a little longer,” he said in a coaxing voice. Unfortunately, he had a terrible sales pitch, stemming from a terrible sales persona. Lots of people were stupid enough to make a deal with the devil, and admittedly I had been too for a while, but at a certain point you needed to draw a line. 

Lucifer was still talking. “Now, I don’t usually show this to just anyone, because it does upset people, but you’re sensible enough and you clearly won’t believe me otherwise, so I think I need to demonstrate” before I could react, he grabbed the blade of the knife with his free hand and squeezed. 

There weren’t a lot of ways to react to that other than shock. I stared in horror as he smiled. “Now, as you can see, it didn’t hurt me, because I am, in fact-”

There was blood dripping onto his shoes. 

Now he was watching it with just as much terror as I was. “What the  _ hell _ ,” he said through gritted teeth, unclenching his hand from around the knife. Dark red blood was welling from a gash there. Through sheer luck, he hadn’t cut any tendons, only the fatty pad of his hand, but he was looking at the injury like he’d never seen it before, and I looked with him. 

Police officers saw a lot of blood. I’d been there, just a door away, during the shootout between Malcolm and Dan and the drug dealers on Palmetto. I’d seen other things too, car accidents, suicides, little kids playing with mommy or daddy’s weapons. The sort of things that made you go home and hug your children tight. I’d never watched someone injure himself with the same blithe optimism Lucifer had just displayed, the same absolute faith in his invulnerability. 

He was absolutely bonkers. And I lived in LA, I didn’t say that lightly. 

Another hand landed on my shoulder. This time I did go for an elbow to the sternum, planning on making for the elevator and getting out. Payment could be figured out at a later date, when  _ I _ was in control of the situation. 

Mazikeen caught the blow against the bar before it could connect, then pushed me roughly out of the way and strode over the Lucifer. “What happened?” she demanded. 

He stood up, looking elated, and showed off his gushing wound like a golden star. “I’m bleeding!” 

“I can see that. How?” Maze on a mission was somehow even more frightening than Lucifer. He just acted strangely, she moved like having a human body was new to her. She held herself at strange angles, every inch of her body under absolute, terrifying control. Once I’d seen her do something concerning with her neck. 

“The loss of my wings, probably- the detective Maze!” 

I’d tried to take advantage of the conversation to sneak out, down the stairs, to no avail. I could hear Mazikeen behind me, her heels on the hard floor as she turned but did not follow. “Don’t go anywhere,” she warned. 

I was getting a little tired of being bossed around by people dressed in overpriced club wear. “Why not?” I called back, keeping my eyes on the stairwell and my ears focused on the eerie shifting silence that was Maze and the litany of small winces and moans that was Lucifer. My tazer was in my hand, but it wasn’t enough for two people. 

She clicked her tongue. “Good question. Why not?”

“We need her to get my wings back, if you must know, my dearest darlingest Maze. And I think we need to tell her truth, which is why I tried to demonstrate my invulnerability, unsuccessfully. Also I definitely need some heroin for this.”

Despite everything she put up with, Maze was having none of it. “It’s just a scratch, don’t be a baby. We’ll bandage it,” she said, but her tone suggested real worry underneath. “I’ll take care of the detective.” 

There was the faintest of noises, like silk tearing, and Lucifer sighed, “Very straight forward Maze. Just… try not to scare her too much.”

I didn’t like where this conversation was going, and took and step towards the stairs. Something sharp and metal, a curved knife, slammed into the stone detailing a few feet away and clattered to the floor. I spun, tazer up, and saw Maze’s face. 

It looked like she’d put a mask on, but no mask cut away at the cheeks that well, or tore away at the flesh surrounding the eyes. Her eye itself was milky white, and it was impossible for her to have gotten a contact in while I was looking away. 

Half her face was bronze and soft and beautiful and the other half looked like the corpse of burn victim. She looked like Twoface with a leather fetish and great hair. She looked positively demonic. 

“It’s real,” she promised sharply, “Realer than you are, probably. Now can you come back over here before Lucifer bleeds out on the carpet?”

There was a right and a wrong, and a to figure out which was which, I needed more information. I kept my weapon in hand, but came back and sat on Lucifer's leather couch, gingerly. 

"All right," I said, begrudgingly. "Talk."


	5. Chapter 5

I stayed. I had questions. Detective work was a hard habit to kick, and now I wanted the truth, preferably before it got someone killed. 

It took a while to get all the answers. Lucifer and Maze weren’t used to sharing, and most of what they said didn’t make any sense. I’d heard more coherent reports from toddlers, and not even my own toddler. Trixie at least had the decency to keep her debriefings tight and low on nonsense. 

“Real angel wings, huh?” I said weakly, when it seemed like they’d finally run out of things to say. 

Lucifer looked a little impressed. “Yes, and quite dangerous in the wrong hands. I must admit, detective, you’re taking this well.” His patronizing tone was just light enough that didn’t want to punch it out of his voice box. I needed him talking. I gripped the arm of the sofa tightly instead. 

“Yeah, well, my whole worldview got pretty well turned around a while ago, and I haven’t been to church since I was seven and got confirmed,” I gave him a terse grin, just to show that my mind wasn’t about to shatter. Maybe it already had, and my voice just hadn’t gotten the memo yet. The prattle I’d built up with Lucifer over the past weeks still flowed easily as the liquor did at Lux. Devil he might be, but I’d gotten to know him pretty well, and I still found myself unimpressed. 

If the devil used pickup lines as bad as his, I wasn’t afraid of hell. Satan himself was actually a step up compared to some of the sleazeballs I’d met in corporate offices and dingy bars up and down LA. 

“Your hands are shaking,” Maze said, holding out a tumbler of brunet liquid. A glance down at my lap confirmed that that the demon was telling the truth. 

I waved away the proffered glass and continued. “You have a plan to get your wings back then? They’re dangerous, if you’re telling the truth, that is.”

“Yes,” Lucifer leaned back and looked thoughtfully at me. He’d shed his suit jacket after he’d gotten blood on it, and somehow looked more menacing in just the white button-down beneath. “I do. I’m going to this gala you say is planned and steal it.” 

The plan seemed to delight him. Maze smiled dangerously. I held back a sigh. 

“But the FBI is already planning a raid,” I reminded him, “You’ll only get yourself arrested. It would be much more sensible to claim the wings afterwards. Can you prove provenance?”

“The only providence they have is divine,” Lucifer quipped, wit still intact despite the events of the day. “No, I can’t. And allowing them anymore exposure than they’ve already had is inviting disaster. It could tear your fragile civilization apart. They need to be recovered- now.”

“Well, you seem to have it under control,” I said, and stood, “I’ll leave you too it then. It was a pleasure doing business with you, Satan.”

Lucifer jumped to his feet as well, spry as a youngster considering his millennia of age “Detective wait! I still require your assistance.”   


I’d been expecting that. He’d said the same thing earlier, and my hopes that he’d forgotten were now dashed. Still, I kept my tone skeptical and light in the face of the a small a apocalypse. “You’re the devil. What would you need my help for?”

“My forces at the moment are, well, Maze. And I have reason to believe my own abilities are compromised.” He held up his bandaged hand.

“You got a boo-boo.”

“More than a mere boo-boo, Miss Decker. I should be invulnerable in this form. I was invulnerable. The fact that I no longer am suggests something has gone very wrong. I’m not at my full capacity.”

I shrugged. “So you’re having supernatural power incontinence. I don’t see how I can help with that.”

The devil and the demon exchanged a not-so-furtive glance. It all but asked to be observed, flaunted its subtle intricacies that suggested a lifetime of intimacy. 

“You understand how these mortal police forces work,” Lucifer said. “You come in with me and help us stay appraised on when the raid might begin. Maze keeps the perimeter. When we have ascertained where the wings are… well, we’ll work from there.”

It wasn’t even a plan’s second cousin three times removed. It hadn’t even met a plan in passing. It had just as high a chance of crashing and burning with me as without me. 

Despite these facts, I couldn’t help but feel a certain responsibility to- at the very least- keep the world as I knew it from ending. Trixie deserved to grow up in a place where logic was logic, and angels were stories, and the government only had access to normal, human weapons of mass destruction. 

I stared Morningstar in his dark eyes and wondered if he was counting on this. 

“I want twenty thousand,” I said. “Upfront, in case something goes wrong.”

He blinked, thick eyelashes fluttering. “You drive a hard bargain, but I recognize you have a biological duty to your spawn. I’ll arrange it.”

“He means I’ll make our accountant arrange it,” Maze sneered, and I wondered for a second who the devil’s accountant was and if they were half as evil as they sounded or simply quiet and banal. Mazikeen was still examining me with a thoughtful gaze, and suddenly she moved closer. “You aren’t about to faint, are you?”

I stumbled away. Her beauty now had an edge to it, and I could see the way she moved was not like a dancer or a fighter, but like human with lizard muscles. Every movement was taken with intent, and her default state was a frightening stillness masked in leather and feathers. “I’m fine. But if you have nothing else to discuss, I would like to go home. This has taken longer than I originally planned.”

“Understandable,” Maze allowed, and this time she let me pass to the elevator. Lucifer still hovered nearby, kind and mildly slimy in a way that I still couldn’t believe wasn’t human.

“Do you need a car?” he offered, “I can arrange one-”

“No,” I said, jabbing at the button. “No. I’ll- I’ll call you.”

In the private silence and shine of the elevator, I finally allowed myself to break down, to hyperventilate for a few moments, to tear at my hair. Then, the moment faded, and sepia version of reality resumed. It was faded, and a little distant, but I was there, and really, when I thought about it, I wasn’t surprised. In this line of business, you might as well work for the actual devil. Better the real deal than the knock-offs humans made. 

  
  
  
  
  


Later that night Lucifer Morningstar picked me up in in a Corvette as dark as his eyes, polished to a gleam. 

I’d already called my mother and told her I was taking a riskier case than usual. She’d protested, but all I’d needed was the confirmation that she still had a copy of the will and the guardianship papers for Trixie. With two officer parents, we’d always kept our affairs sorted, and now I was thankful for it. The money, itemized and receipted, was sitting in a bank account. Just as snug and secure was my daughter in her bed. The babysitter was prepared to stay the whole next day if it came to that. 

“You look acceptable,” he said. “I’m impressed by the dress.” It was silver, cut low in the front and lower in the back, missing a few sequins, but still somehow presentable. The fact that it was still in my house was a mixture of good fortune and an inherited unwillingness to throw even garbage away if you’d paid good money for it. 

“The fact that women sleep with you is the only reason I actually believe you have ungodly powers,” I told him. “This is Los Angeles. Anyone can get a good dress second hand from a movie star at a benefit auction.”

“But not everyone can pull one off,” he grinned. 

“Just drive.”

When we reached the event admissions were in full swing. People in many different garbs, from all over the world, were pouring in. The only thing they shared was the aura they all gave off, almost a stench. They were all filthy rich. It showed in gold jewelry and fine cars and the deference shown to them. Even the way they carried themselves spoke to breeding so high it couldn’t legally drive. It certainly explained why they all had chauffeurs. 

It was going to take some effort to blend in. But I hadn’t done badly at undercover work in my day. I clung to Lucifer’s arm and tried to look like I wanted to buy my way into heaven. 

“Do you have a plan for getting in?” I whispered to him.

“Confidence,” he murmured, leaving me unsure if this was our strategy or just a general recommendation. 

In we swept, like a gale, and made for the man standing between us and the gala hall. The guardian of the gate was not easily swayed by ‘confidence’, it turned out. He wanted a ticket out of us. 

A presence materialized at my back, sending a shiver like a thousand tiny hands crawling down my vertebrae.

“Luci,” said a low, attractive voice. This softly lit, lushly decorated lobby was far different from the last place I’d encountered it. 

Morningstar and I turned together in time, like dolls on a cuckoo clock. In a suit, Amenadiel was more mundane, but still unspeakably perfect. His skin shone under the lights like polished jet, and he had a kind of serene beauty his brother’s scruff and dangerous eyes could never match. 

“Brother dearest,” Lucifer replied, with just a hint of a jagged edge to betray his true feelings. Underneath my hand, his arm had developed knots and tense planes of muscle. An animal preparing to spring could have held itself less taut. “We were just explaining why we don’t have tickets. You brought them, of course.”

It was a bit of sibling nastiness even I, the lonely poster child for only children, could pick up on. Amenadiel frowned, and his eyes darted towards me, lips forming around a question that couldn’t possibly be answered here in front of this smuggler’s henchman. The time for confidence was over. As usual, I needed to step in and fix things. 

“My apologies for my clients,” I said, leaning forward. “They didn’t become aware of this event until quite recently and didn’t have a chance to acquire invitations. However, I believe it’s in your employer’s best interest to allow them to participate in the auction. They have a… personal interest in one of the items.”

The bouncer looked flattered at the attention, softening in the face of feminine guile and less  openly hostile conversation. Still, he shook his head. 

“I cannot admit you without a ticket, Miss. This event is quite exclusive.”

Lucifer opened his mouth as if to speak again, and I took a small step back, letting one of my pumps tread on his toes. The pressure was light, but could be easily increased with just a slight shift in weight distribution. He got the message and went still. 

I tittered, the laugh of socialites and manic birds. “You must not understand who this is. This is Lucifer Morningstar. He’s worth millions, and as you can see, he’s willing to pay for a connection to the divine. And this is his business partner- Mr. Adiel, an expert in religious topics.”

“He specializes in the study of angels,” Lucifer added, apparently unable to help himself. 

The bouncer touched his earpiece, pensive as crackling instructions poured in. They were indecipherable and tantalizing, and went on for too long. Finally, the man gave a curt nod to his bosses- a strange action given that they weren’t in the room- and looked back to our party. 

“Behave yourselves,” he warned, and I smiled privately to myself. In this town you could always count on the power of names to see you through. If the name was that of the devil himself, all the better. No one liked an eccentric better than the darlings of Bel-Air. 

Lucifer waggled his hands in the air, waving, I realized, to a camera set discreetly in the corner. What an actor. Except, no, his over-the-top motions served to disguise something else. As we stepped into the overflowing, ornate gala hall, he slipped something back into his pocket with a pickpockets smoothness; leaving me wondering what trinket or bribe he had palmed while I wasn’t looking. 

Gone were the concrete walls, fake potted plants, and clean lines of the outside. The venue itself was suitably disreputable, and certainly off the radar. It had been cleaned up nicely for the event, however. The rich paid for experiences as much as objects, and luxury in their smuggled divinity buying was a must. 

White linen tableclothes covered standing tables, and soft golden light suffused an airy room. It was clean, inviting, godly. Just a little bit exciting for the thrill seekers, while still being holy enough for the very old people who dotted the hall. 

“Let’s find a table, shall we,” Lucifer said with all the forced good cheer of a Hallmark store. 

Amenadiel wasn’t having it. He clicked his tongue and gestured to the nearest empty one, hustling us both towards it. “Lucifer, you’ll have to explain what you’re doing here with a… non-family member. It could be dangerous.”

I scoffed. His earnest concern wasn’t touching, given his earlier threats. “Don’t worry, I know."

The angel hesitated, lips parting ever so slightly. “How much?” Still, he addressed his brother, not me. 

Lucifer answered gleefully, “Oh,  _ everything _ .”

“Luci!”

“Look, I needed the detective’s help to retrieve the wings, all right? It seemed… prudent. And Maze agreed.”

“We’re taking a demon’s advice now then?” 

They continued bickering, as I surveyed the room. It was nowhere near full, though champagne glasses were already going around. On the stage, a few different shapes sat under thick black drapes. Few of them looked large enough to fit Lucifer’s descriptions of his wings, but there was the curtain in the back- was it simply a backdrop or part of the show. 

“You lost your powers!” Amenadiel exclaimed, bringing me back to the brotherly dispute playing out next to me. It had been all too easy to tune them out. The same instincts I used to ignore Trixie’s arguments with her sleepover friends just kicked in. 

Reluctantly, I made myself refocus. Lucifer was sulking like a wounded child and pretending he wasn’t, while Amenadiel grew more and more affronted by the moment. 

I took the glass of champagne deposited in front of me and flicked a few drops at both of them. “I can’t say I understand what’s going on, with angels or demons, but can we focus? These wings seem like the most important thing.”

“Of course,” Lucifer said, instantly.

Amenadiel smiled, “I agree. And Detective, I am deeply sorry if I was rude to you the last time we met or made you feel unsafe. I was mostly focused on getting civilians out of my brother’s path, and wasn’t thinking of the consequences.” That rung false, he had a liar’s smile, but I let it rest. There were more important things to focus on. 

“Maze is checking all the back passages, but says it’s a maze back there, no pun intended.” Morningstar updated us in a sotto voice. “What about the raid?”

That made sense. I looked once more at the curtain on the back of the stage, wondering if there were any moves we could make. All I had was a suspicion, was a suspicion enough? 

No, probably not. We needed to be certain. But my skin itched under the lights and people’s stares. There were federal agents in this crowd, and a raid was scheduled. Stings weren’t my specialty, however I figured we had a little while. They’d wait until all the guests had arrived, even the stragglers. It made no sense to bait a trap and then only catch a few rats. 

Maybe we’d make it out before then, or maybe not. They couldn’t charge us with much on a suspicion, only put it down in case files. Lucifer was disreputable enough and I’d fallen far. Consorting with criminals at blackmarket events wasn’t a stretch. Officers who’d known my father would shake their heads in dismay and wonder where it had all gone wrong, stop answering my calls, and dismiss a lifetime of service. 

The Decker legacy didn’t need another disgrace, but it was going to get one. At least this time I’d have the comfort of knowing I’d lost my reputation doing the right thing. 

“Mr. Adiel and company?”

A man in the discreet, all black suit of the local security was standing in front of our table. When I looked at Maze I saw a natural killer, one who didn’t have to try. This man wasn’t the same. He’d have to try to kill someone, and it looked like he’d put the work in. Everything about him said “hired muscle”. Ex-military probably, maybe even ex-police like myself. Despite the confident lethality with which he held himself, he still looked a bit awkward in the midst of all this wealth and ostentation, faced with Morningstar’s smirks and Amenadiel’s stony gaze. 

“We are,” I confirmed, unwilling to let the poor man squirm. 

“The host would like to see you,” he said shortly, settling on brevity in the face of potentially dangerous intellectuals. Then, like many arrogant men, he overshot. “Since, uh, you don’t have an invitation.”

Before I could even flick my eyes towards Lucifer, Amenadiel stepped forward, mind already made up. “Lead the way, we’d be happy to talk to him” he said, completely unaware of the potential for murder that awaited in dark hallways and closed rooms. Or maybe he was aware and just didn’t care. He was an angel after all, he wasn’t in danger of dying.

“Always making the decisions, always bossy,” Lucifer grumbled as we both wove our way through tables and people wearing more money in jewelry than I made in a year. The auction stage was disappearing behind us as we pressed through the crowd, and as I turned my head to catch on last glimpse of it I saw something else. Holding a service door for some waiters was a woman in all black, discreet enough that she too could have been part of the staff. Mazikeen’s face was unmistakable, even stripped of makeup she had a molten beauty. 

Catching my eye, she made a sharp gesture. Like most gestures as seen from a distance it was impossible to translate. Without familiarity or shared training, all we could really do was draw each other’s attention, say “yes, I’m here!” Though aware of the barrier, I still tried to vault it. I waved, then pulled my hand sharply back down towards myself and hoped she’d get the general message. If not, the play I was about to make would be next to useless. 

“Actually,” I began, “I have to go to the restroom. Could you tell me where it is?”

The security guard waved vaguely. “Down the hall and to the left,” he said. 

Lucifer did not seem as inclined to take my departure lightly. “You can’t leave Det- Chloe. We need you.”

“You really don’t,” I insisted, and hoped I was right. “And it’s… kind of an emergency…”

The power of that loaded phrase had never failed me before. It bounced off of Lucifer like a rubber ball. “We can wait,” he said understandingly. 

“You really can’t,” I insisted, and turned to Amenadiel for backup. 

He hesitated, “We wouldn’t want to hold the event up, Lucifer. Your girlfriend can handle herself.” 

We both snorted, but his brother’s mere words seemed to distract Morningstar, put him back on the right path. Waving a cape in front of bull, or a shiny object in front of a child, I noted. I’d keep that in mind. 

Not that I’d need to. We were never going to work together again. 

I peeled off and headed for the indicated bathrooms, hoping Maze had gotten the memo and followed me. 

The bathroom was quiet this early into the event, devoid of even nose powderers and hair fidgeters. I breathed a sigh of relief and started checking stalls. Three turned up empty. In the fourth was Mazikeen, leaning against a wall and smirking. She ought to have been popping bubble gum. Instead she was wielding two knives. It had much the same effect. 

“Jesus-”

“Absolutely not.”

“- you scared me Maze. How did you even get here so fast?”

She shrugged. “Trade secret. I see you picked up the angel.”

“He and Lucifer went to go talk to whoever is running this show,” I said. Maze, for all her carefully engineered nonchalance, looked genuinely uncomfortable with that. Demon or not, apparently she still valued her boss’s well being. “His brother is with him,” I reassured her, “He’ll be fine.”

“It’s his brother I’m worried about,” she sniped and sheathed her knives. “What did you want then?”

“I think I know where the wings are,” Quickly, I explained the layout of the stage, the large curtain, and my vague thoughts that surely they wouldn’t try to move something as big as angel wings through a crowded venue mid-auction. “If we could steal them now-”

“It’s all over with,” Maze finished, with a pleased expression. 

“I just have no idea how we’d pull it off. Have you figured out anything about this place?”

She tilted her head consideringly. “Definitely secret passages,” 

That was promising. My conception of secret passages started and stopped with Nancy Drew books, but surely it couldn’t be that different in practice. 

A lady stumbled into the bathroom. We both froze, but she only glanced between us, muttered something in French and pushed through to a stall. A sneer curled across Maze’s face, mixed with a measure of good humor

It was strange. She was frightening in the real world, but the intermediary space of the powder room, all pretenses fell aside. 

My expression must have said something, or perhaps the ticking clock made up both our minds. Maze cracked her neck, first one side and then the other, and let her shoulders relax. “Let’s do this.”

 


	6. Chapter 6

  
  


A series of little capillary corridors crisscrossed the building. They were littered with the unconscious- I hoped unconscious- bodies. Maze was nothing if not through, and the guard roster was tipped in our favor. 

“Statue guards,” Maze sniffed, proud as any of the priests or princes out there. “They’re only good for looking pretty.” 

I stepped over a body that was stirring gently, which all in all I put down as a good sign. The less fatalities, the lower the chances were that we’d get prosecuted for this. 

“This is an emergency door to the gala hall,” Maze explained when we finally stopped. It was just another clean, metal door with a sign that said “Do Not Push”. 

“Fire codes?” I guessed, impressed that a venue this dubious had even bothered to keep up with them. 

She shrugged, “I guess. I’m fairly sure there’s an actually secret passage closer to the stage, but I couldn’t tell where it led. Possibly the garage.This one will have to do, it’s workable."

“It’s workable,” I echoed, nudging a groaning guard with my toe.

“So, do you want to strip him or will I have to?”

  
  
  
  


The plan was simple. So simple, in fact, I’d almost certainly seen it in some of Trixie’s TV shows. Dress up as the bad guy, waltz right in. We’d come in with extra black tablecloths, stolen off of some reception desks that now looked rather bare and plastic, and pretend to be doing some last minute staging. If we could ascertain that the wings were there… well, we’d build that bridge when we reached the river. 

_“Confidence,_ ” Lucifer had said. 

“Confidence,” I muttered and pulled the door in. 

A few heads turned as we moved through the now brim full auction. The stage was still empty, a testament to Lucifer and Amenadiel’s distraction skills, but we couldn’t count on it staying that way forever. 

Our sole barrier was a single, bored woman at the base of the dais. She crossed her arms as we approached. 

“Last minute staging,” I said, Lucifer’s word like a heartbeat in my head. 

That didn’t appear to hold up well under scrutiny. “You’re new?” she responded, sharp confusion and suspicion as loud as an alarm in between us. “I haven’t seen you before.”

“I’m actually part of the design team here,” I claimed, aware that Maze was doing something with her hands and hoping beyond hopes that she could back me up. “Sort of a temp. But the covers up there have gotten very- wrong, very wrong. It could destroy the ambiance of the event.”

Ambiance. Where had that word come from? Somewhere past panic, I’d found the spirit of an interior designer. 

Finally, Maze came through and handed the woman a small, folded piece of paper. She examined it for a few minutes, mouth forming a little ‘oh’ of shock. Then she pocketed the hundred dollar bill Maze had slid her, and waved us past. 

“Be quick about it,” she warned, as if she hadn’t just taken a bribe. Even now, the ways corruption jostled past workplace standards offended something deep in my soul. Snickering, Maze elbowed past me, leaping onto the stage with ease. 

Don’t look like a chump, my colleagues in private investigation had warned me in bars and old alleys. Don’t be the dumb, idealist detective. Not when it costs you. 

I clambered up to join her, a flurry of hasty motion trying to make for the huge shape in the back without being too obvious about it. Measured, interior decorator steps. Confidence. I shook out the tablecloth, and handed one end to Maze, and headed straight back. Together we maneuvered to shimmy under the existing curtain, holding our table cloth like a shield. 

And there, in the dim, were angel feathers. They glowed softly, like silver in daydreams. The feathers were a soft creamy white, long and perfect. 

For a second, I found god underneath a bit of fabric at an illegal auction around midnight. Then, the shimmer faded. I tried to touch the feathers, and found them delicate and brittle to the touch with a distinct sheen of plastic. Fiber optic strands in place of angel down created the glowing effect, but it was human beautiful, only divine from a distance.

There was a gunshot. 

Simultaneously, Maze and I dove for one another, pulling each other down and rolling off the stage. Screams rung out, closer than the sharp crack of the gun. It quickly followed by another, just as distant, and the shrieks of the party guests increased in pitch. Apparently it took two whole gunshots to panic. 

As I got to my knees and drew my weapon- a can of pepper spray, the only thing it had seemed safe to bring without the protection of a badge- I noticed other people were also arming themselves. Unlike me or knife wielding Maze, they had guns and badges. The feds were thrown off guard, but already making for exits, blocking frantic socialites from exiting. 

There was a hand at my elbow, and I nearly peppersprayed Lucifer. His brother was with him. 

“How did you get here?” I demanded. They’d appeared from thin air in the middle of a crowd, and the only thing to our backs was a solid looking wall. 

“No time to explain,” he said, “We need to leave.” He wasn’t wrong, the guard from earlier was now holding an FBI badge, no wonder she’d let herself be so easily bribed, and looking in our direction as she tried to prevent a horde of well dressed senior citizens from rioting. She wouldn't let us past with out a fight, I certainly wouldn't if two unknown players tried to start a heist movie mid-sting. At the moment, at least, she was occupied. We had perhaps five minutes until the handcuffs came out. 

“The wings are fake,” Maze told him and he didn’t look surprised. Neither, did Amenadiel, I noticed. 

“How are we going to get out?” I asked. We were in something of a corner, literally and figuratively. 

Amenadiel, face tired in a way that was indescribable and hard to reconcile with his angelic nature, pressed his lips together. 

“Can I carry you?” Lucifer asked. 

The second I gave my a reluctant nod, the scenery changed. It was like a bad cut between two pieces of a movie, or a dvd that had just skipped. One minute we were one place, the next we were another entirely.    
  
And I was in Lucifer’s arms. That was the most pressing matter.It was a respectful sort of lift, a polite bridal carry, but it was less than ideal.    


I punched him in the chest. 

“Ow! I’m already putting you down, patience, detective.”

Feet planted firmly on the ground wasn’t much better. I felt dizzy, not physiologically, but spiritually. I knew reality wasn’t supposed to work that way, that you weren’t supposed to be able to just jump from one locale to another, and yet in all defiance of my personal wishes it had occurred. 

The street Lucifer had parked on was dark and cool. I pressed one hand to my forehead, determined not to swoon like some rookie cop. “What was that? Angel powers, I presume?”

“Amenadiel’s,” Lucifer confirmed. “He can control time.”

“I had to, since you claimed you could get shot and refused to use your abilities.” Amenadiel rolled his eyes. 

Lucifer’s hand went to his stomach, pressing down on the spot where his appendix might be. “Yes, well, that is what I thought.”

I caught the past tense, even as he tried to slip it past. “Thought?”

The hand over his gut fluttered, and I shoved it aside as I pressed him up against his car. If he was injured I needed to know. The only thing worse than a living Lucifer Morningstar might be a dead one. 

“No need to get handsy,” he muttered automatically, but it was a faint protest. As my fingers probed the area I found not blood, but a hole. His suit jacket had a tear in it about bullet sized, which continued down through his shirt. Through it I found nothing but warm, smooth skin. 

“You were shot,” I accused. 

Morningstar smiled his horrible smile, and pulled my hands away. “Just once. It turns out I was mistaken about being able to die after all. I thought proximity to my wings might have done it, but if they weren’t there…”

“He whined about it the whole walk back to you.” Amenadiel reported with brotherly glee, “Like a baby.”

“Oh do toss off, brother,” Lucifer said. Maze drew her knives again and held them loosely, backing up demand with a threat. The angel gave us all one last look. 

“Find your wings, Lucifer,” he said. “Or I’ll find them for you. And consider going home.”

“Not a chance in hell.”

Still shaking his head, Amenadiel vanished instantaneously. It was as if someone had frozen the world between frames and edited him out. I resisted the urge to flinch. Maze’s face had been frightening but not any more so than a grisly murder scene. These demonstrations of power were arcane and impossible to come to terms with in way viscera just wasn’t. 

A few cars drove past us, up the long street. 

Lucifer forced another smile, and this time I could tell it was forced. Whether I liked it or not, he was unraveling for me. 

“I’ll drive you home,” he offered. 

I looked around, “What about Maze?” She’d disappeared too, not in a frightening way, just in the usual manner of people in the dark. 

He was unconcerned, “Oh, she’ll find her way home."

Their relationship was strange, but none of my business. More vexing was the fact that she still had my dress. Ah, well, twenty thousand wasn’t a bad price to pay for a third hand cocktail dress. The guard’s pilfered suit was short on me, too broad in the shoulders, and smelled of bad cologne, but almost comforting to wear. It reminded me of stealing Dan’s uniform when we were young rookie cops in love, the way it hung loosely, how forgiving it had been when I was pregnant with Trixie. 

Missing him was a tough habit to break, but I’d mourned enough in the past year and certainly wasn’t going to break down in front of Morningstar. I slid into the passenger seat of the car. 

Technically, the job was done. I’d accomplished everything I’d been asked to, everything I’d been paid too. It still didn’t feel right. Those wings, objects imbued with the same power as Amenadiel who could stop time, belonging to the devil himself, were still out there, uncontrolled and unwatched. The world was full of people who could do terrible things with just a bit of power, and people who really oughtn’t know God existed. It was a certainty that wrecked havoc on the brain, I was realizing. 

Serving and protecting was a tough habit to kick sometimes. 

“You know,” I said over the roaring engine, loud for the sake of being loud, “It really doesn’t make sense. Why would fake angel wings show up in LA right after yours went missing?”

Lucifer gave a neutral hum, just an octave or two higher than the car he was driving. I watched him as I continued. 

“You know, they looked exactly like you described them. The feathers, the size, everything. Even the skin and muscle on the medial ends. Kind of weird, huh?” It had been hard to see them underneath the curtain. This was more a guess than anything. 

His poker face was sub-par, and his mouth twitched as I spoke. 

“You do know something! Whoever was running the auction has seen the wings at least then.”

Like paper, he folded. “I have one or two… suspicions. I was going to follow them up after dropping you off at home.”

“Let’s go now,” I said before my brain could catch up. “You’ll have better luck catching the culprit if you move fast.” 

Now his smile was genuine, delighted and wicked. “We wouldn’t have the first idea of where to start.”

“Don’t lie to me,” he looked offended, and I remembered vaguely that he had a complex about lying. One of at least a dozen. “Or twist the truth. You have at least a few ideas.” 

A corner of his mouth pulled up, as if he had gotten caught on a fish hook, too extreme a motion to look like muscle alone. “Carmen, the proprietor of the place, he wanted to speak to us. Amenadiel, specifically. He was… quite nervous and had a lot of questions. Unfortunately we didn’t get a chance to talk much before Amenadiel decided to test how immortal I was, but something was _off_ about the man.”

Police instinct settled back over my shoulders, a well worn coat, too long habituated to ever fully shake off. “Tell me everything.”

 

  
  
  
We stopped in the parking lot of a twenty four hour liquor store while Lucifer talked and I made some phone calls to old friends. Then we switched places. It was easy to theorize, I was good at picking apart motivations, and Lucifer had far more disreputable friends. 

My phone buzzed, the harsh noise jolting us out of our heated conversation.

“Have you found out where in the world Carmen Sandiego is?” he asked hopefully. I didn’t even try to parse that bit of doggerel. For someone who had supposedly lived in Hell, he was good at pop culture references. 

“I think I might have a lead on Carmen’s house, yes.” A mansion, just south of the city. Records were muddled by mob connections, purposefully smudged in places, and absolutely lacking in others; but it was connected to him at the least. 

Lucifer held up his phone as well. “My friend’s friend just came through. Shall we compare them?”   
  
I snatched his phone before he could make a scene out of it. The night was wearing on, and the babysitter got paid by the hour. 

The addresses matched. 

“It looks like this might be it,” I confirmed with a sigh and leaned back against the smooth leather of my seat. “We should go now, he might decide to skip town.”

Now he hesitated. “Are you sure you want to do this? It could be dangerous.” He’d dragged me into a black market sale of illegal goods, and happily parked us in the shadiest spot in LA for thirty minutes, but apparently this was where Lucifer Morningstar drew the line. 

“I want to,” I insisted, as much to myself as to him, “Honestly, if I don’t see this through I’m not sure I’ll know it’s real.” Confusion crinkled his face, throwing little shadows in the streetlights. I felt like I had to explain myself further. “I need to see the end of whatever this little saga is. It’s not right to leave loose ends when there’s so much at stake.”

The tension eased. “Well,” Lucifer commented, “It’s good to know your Yelp reviews were accurate. You know, you’re very thorough for a mercenary agent. Very- principled.”

There was a genuine curiosity in his voice, but no real pressure. The wonderful thing about Lucifer was that he was so self-involved he really didn’t care. I suspected I could have spilled my entire life story and he would have accepted it on faith and made a joke.

“I was a police officer,” I said, which was almost as good as a whole confession. “It was very important to me.”

He shook his head, “No, no, that’s not it. No offense, but the police are on the whole rather corrupt. I’ve gotten out of enough speeding tickets to know. You’re different.”   
  
It was an observation of fact, not a compliment, but it made me feel oddly vulnerable. Lucifer’s most superficial charms had mostly failed, but he was not an uncharming man when he put in the effort to empathize. 

Maybe the fact that it was past midnight on a school night was making me go soft. The sooner this was over and I was home, the better. “Let’s go before someone gets over their fear that this is a drug dealer’s car and mugs us.” 

Lucifer gunned it. 


	7. Chapter 7

Carmen’s mansion had high walls and all the tell tale signs of an excellent security system. It all came apart in Lucifer’s mere presence. Cameras went dead in their nests, little lights flickering out all at once. The electronic lock on the outer gate beeped gently at just a caress of his fingers. It was frightening. It was infuriating. 

“You’re showing off.”

He allowed, “Maybe a little. Usually humans think what I do is just party tricks. It feels nice to be appreciated.”

I wrinkled my nose at his arrogance, his consummate friendliness. Except, we were friends now, by some definitions. I certainly wasn’t getting paid for this. “Pride comes before the fall,” I warned, and realized too late how terrible a warning that was to him, of all people. 

“Already done,” he purred. There was real hurt behind his eyes, as if even the mention of  _ falling _ was an open wound, but I wasn’t going to pry. We were friends now.    
  
I passed him a little packaged Wet Wipe- a parent’s best friend and a homicide detective’s best hope of not bringing home bloodstains- from my purse, “Wipe all the surfaces you touch,” I warned, trying to move past that little faux pas as quickly as possible. “Even angels probably leave DNA evidence and I’m not letting either of us get arrested.” Chances were low that a criminal would call the cops even for a home invasion, but it always paid to be careful. 

He acquiesced, and then paused, “I really do feel the need to warn you, my wings aren’t really meant to be experienced by human brains.”

“You’re the one who told me about them,” I pointed out. Every minute we lingered in the street was another minute someone could spot us. Lucifer’s car was stupidly recognizable. Still, reluctance kept him frozen in place, hands moving slowly as if to open the gate. 

One more push. I reached out a hand and looked back at him, “I’ll be fine. I’ve seen lots of terrible things.” 

There was barely a sound as the gate opened and we crept inside. Technology has made the place quiet as a grave, and Lucifer’s movements were catlike- effortless and nearly silent, with a mixed chance of random acts of destruction as we moved into the morning. 

The house, a modern monstrosity of glass and stone, loomed ahead. Almost all of its considerable bulk was dark. One wall of windows was half illuminated, dim light and dancing shadows playing out across the lawn. Privacy glaze made it impossible to see inside, and I was suddenly uncertain of what we would find inside. 

There had been an FBI raid, and a man like Carmen was unpredictable at the best of times. 

Lucifer didn’t seem to share my concerns. Now, with the house in sight, a rising current of fury was running through him, quickening his steps and twisting up his face in a rictus of anger. I held out an arm to stop him and whispered, “Let me go in first, I’m armed.”

Some of the rage drained, replaced by a mild embarrassment, as if he hadn’t meant to be seen getting so worked up about something as pedestrian as his own body parts, at least not around me.

The door swung open, easy as counting to three. It shouldn’t have been that easy, not in a house this nice, but I was learning to recognize Lucifer’s innate ability to undo any barriers in his way. It seemed his inhibition lowering aura- which I was slowly beginning to recognize did exist and simply didn’t work on me- wasn’t limited to sentient beings. 

I checked all the corners and found nothing but antiques and tasteful sculptural pieces in little niches. Down a hall, the light flickered. 

Pepper spray in hand, wishing again I had a gun, I moved forward. Lucifer followed, antsy as a picnic basket in the park. Around a corner, I could see an older man, sitting in a chair with an empty glass, staring at whatever was in front of him. 

Lucifer lost whatever patience he’d had to begin with. He stalked into Carmen’s line of sight with the aplomb of an actor walking on stage. Glass shattered as Carmen jumped, looking like he’d seen a ghost.   
  
Well, there went the element of surprise. I followed suit and moved into the room. No security, no weapons in sight, only-

Oh. 

They were _ beautiful _ . 

Mounted on like a painting in a museum were two wings. They were soft and glowing, and more gorgeous than I had ever imagined. Pure aesthetics couldn’t account for it. They drew the eye, demanded your attention, and then told you that there was magic in the world after all. 

They could wait, I reminded myself, and tore my gaze away. In the middle of the room, Lucifer was standing over poor Carmen, every bit the vengeful angel. There was some gibbering, nonsense mostly about sources and apologies and how wonderful they had been, how impossible it had been to let them go.

“Lucifer,” I called, “Let the poor man stand up. We have your wings, now let's go.”

When he turned, I saw a face incandescent with rage. No, more than that, it glowed from within in an unsettling manner. Were his eyes redder than they had been when we’d first walked in? Was his bone structure more gaunt, more haunted?

I resisted the urge to step back. “Lucifer…”

“I’m sorry detective, but I need to know who sent him, who told him where my wings would be.”

That startled a chuckle out of me, short and involuntary but still enough to snap Lucifer out of his very literally crimson haze. He blinked in confusion, and I had no choice but to put together the pieces my unconscious mind had already assembled. The answers were fairly obvious, if you looked them in the eye. “I mean, it’s pretty clear it was you brother, isn’t it?”

Lucifer dropped Carmen ungraciously and turned to me, “How can you be certain of that? I wouldn’t put it past Amenadiel, certainly, but you don’t have any proof.” 

“He knew where you were going,” I pointed out, “He even knew your wings were missing days ago, and was worried that I was looking for them. He didn’t look surprised when we said the wings were fake. And the auctioneer wanted to see him specifically, you said.”

There was a chance I was wrong, there were probably other suspects, other supernatural beings, but all that I had seen left only one possibility. Estranged brothers simply didn’t show up out of nowhere without getting into hijinks along the way, not in my experience. In human families, that usually meant a murder or a fudged will or a minor celebrity scandal. This was probably the angelic equivalent. 

A light clicked on behind Lucifer’s eyes, this time in a purely natural, human way. “Amenadiel did seem rather desperate to have that meeting over with.” He leaned back over poor Carmen, wriggling desperately away. I felt sorry for the man, but the sooner I got Lucifer home the better it would go for everyone, so I held my tongue. “How about it then? Is the name Amenadiel familiar to you?”

“The angel,” Carmen said, “He came, he told me-”

“That’s enough,” I said. “He’s not well Lucifer.”

“He stole what’s mine,” Lucifer pointed out, not sounding guilty.

“And the FBI raided his operation. They could do even more damage if you leaked some of his personal information to them later. But this,”I waved a hand at the broken glass and overturned chair, “This isn’t justice.”

He looked unimpressed with the usual anti-vigilante spiel. “It’s not supposed to be, Chloe. It’s _punishment_.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose, “Well, we’re taking the only actual divine item he’ll ever get his hands on. Is that good enough?”

Lucifer considered this for a long, dark moment, and for just a heartbeat I worried he’d go off completely. Instead, he sagged and slunk back over to the wings, running one thoughtful hand over them. “I suppose it is for now,” he allowed. “Shall we- ah- ow.” Wincing, he lifted up one foot and pried something out of the sole. I leaned forward to look closer, and saw glitter and dark blood on his fingers. “Must have stepped on a bit of glass,” he said casually. “Shall we get my wings home?”

I nodded, and then, looking at the wings in all their glory once more, realized something terrible. “They aren’t going to fit in your trunk.”

  
  
  
  
  
  


The night was wearing thin, and so was my patience with stolen clothes and the smell of gasoline, when Lucifer finally pulled up in front of my house. The wings, wrapped in a pilfered sheet and poking up out of the backseat of the car, precluded any possibility of me inviting him in. He’d only get Trixie excited. 

“Thank you,” I said finally, “For letting me see this through.”

“Thank you,” he smiled tightly, “I most certainly couldn’t have done it without you and your wonderful police contacts. You’ll have to tell me your history with them one day.”

I snorted. “I absolutely do not.” Still, I walked over to his side of the car and gave him a firm handshake. “It was nice doing business with you, Mr. Morningstar.”

“And you too, Detective Decker.” He looked up at me with his coal dark eyes, then carefully pulled me down towards him. I let myself be pulled. “Can I?” he whispered. 

It was stupid, it was so stupid, but he was less annoying than I’d given him credit for, and it had been so long. Besides, if there was anyone I could count on to be a no strings attached rebound kiss, it was probably Lucifer Morningstar. I nodded. 

He kissed me carefully, tenderly, starting at the corner of my mouth and moving in to the bow of my lips. His skin was soft and hot and the rasp of his beard was just rough enough to be exciting. If there had ever been a man tailor made for kissing, it was this one. 

Water hit the back of my head and we broke apart.

“Is that rain?” he asked in wonderment.    
  
“Neighbor’s sprinkler system,” I corrected, and stood up straight.The universe itself wanted me to do the right thing. “Well… good night.”

“Good night, Chloe,” he touched his fingers to mouth, “You really are something special.”

It was exactly the sort of bizarre compliment he would have wanted to go out on, so I turned and walked for the door. As I did, I heard the flick of a lighter and a soft, but almost delighted swear word. 

He was strange, even by Los Angeles standards, and I held by my original assessment that he was trouble. More trouble, almost certainly, than he was worth. 

  
  
  


It was a tepid, searingly bright day when Lucifer Morningstar waltzed into my office in a suit sharper than a switchblade and took a seat. 

I put my pen down and stared at him for a few minutes. In all truth, I hadn’t expected to ever see him again. Lucifer Morningstar was the sort of person who burst into a life, wreck merry havoc, and then disappeared on the breeze. He was a black swan of a man, unexplainable and unexpected, exceptional but once in a lifetime- at least provided you didn’t live in Australia. 

The money had come through, and then I had googled him just to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating the whole series of events, but I’d left Lux well enough alone. The memory of those wings was burned forever in my brain, shining and divine, and I never wanted to see their like again. I knew a potential for addiction when it was incubating in my own brain.

Now, with him in front of me, that little piece of my mind that ached for another hit of angelic presence was screaming with desire. I tamped it down and put on a professional smile. It never paid to look fragile in front of a former customer, especially one as erratic as Mr. Morningstar. 

“You’re back.” _ I never would have kissed you if I knew you were coming back. That was a moment of weakness and champagne. _

“Don’t sound so surprised, detective,” he crossed one leg lazily and folded his hands on top of his knees, a picture of calm in a cheap plastic chair. “I have another case for you.”

That was highly suspicious coming from a figure like him. Usually with a nightclub owner it was a cheating girlfriend or small scale embezzlement. Lucifer aimed to surprise, however.

“Not something involving god again, I hope?” I ventured. 

He hesitated too long. 

“I swear...”   
  
“It’s almost entirely human, I assure you. Just some priest who came nosing around the premises the other night. If Father is using him as a tool, his prophet standards are much degraded, and I mean, he used to work with men who lived in caves and wore rags in the desert. No, this is just… a minor annoyance.”

I looked him up and down, searching for any sign of dishonesty, and found none. He was more relaxed than when I’d first met him, shoulders looser and gaze more direct. The only possible tell was his incessant fiddling with a neat row of bandages up and down his fingers, and that could be chalked up to a naturally hyperactive personality. 

Despite myself, I was inclined to trust him. It was a mistake, no doubt, but jobs had been thin on the ground since we’d last seen one another and even if I was making rent more regularly now, there  _ was  _ Trixie’s college fund to think of. 

Eyes still locked with his, I leaned forward over my desk. “If I take this job- and that’s a big if- I want to know one thing. Why me? There are a lot of private detectives in Los Angeles, and you know I’m not going to be giving the King of Hell a discount.”

His Adam’s apple, a sinful thing by nature and even more outrageous on the man who had gotten Adam to take the first bite, bobbed. “Well, Detective Decker. I could say it was because you’re so determined to finish the case, or because you’re honest and I appreciate that. It could be because you got results where no one else could. But can’t I just enjoy working with you?” 

“No.”

He blinked innocently, long lashes fluttering with a charm that must have worked on everyone, and that was too much. The litany of compliments and false praise I could take, but not this facade. I slammed my hands down on the table. “No, not like this. Tell me the truth, Lucifer, or I will walk you out of this office and never look back.”

Two long fingers pinched the edge of a bandaid laid over his palm. “I- I suppose you do deserve the truth. You make me defenseless, Chloe. I have done a lot of exploring over the past few weeks, and it’s just you, only you. I’m not sure what’s going on, but I need to see it through.”

It sounded ridiculous, like a metaphor in riddle giftwrap. It sounded like someone in love, and unsure how to process it. 

His hands looked like they’d taken a beating. Clearly he was more vulnerable now, even with his wings, than he’d expected. Even if he couldn’t be killed, he could still be hurt. The metaphysics of that escaped me, but I knew how men acted when their world had turned upside down. 

Lucifer wasn’t the emotional type, which undoubtedly that made this turn all the more perplexing for him. He needed a friend. 

If there was a chance I could do this morally, I would. Not because of the singing need for higher powers in my veins, and not just for Trixie. Morningstar wasn’t all bad, and he deserved someone on his side. 

“You know my usual terms,” I began, “No work when I need to be there for the kid. Hours billed as we go. Also, I want our working relationship to stay professional. None of your usual nonsense.”

For a moment, he looked hurt, but he nodded. “All I want is answers, Chloe.”

We were on a first name basis now, I noted. I pulled out my usual contract and he signed it with a flourish, then held out his hand for a handshake. 

Again, I eyed him. Tall, dark, handsome, and hellish. Even looking perfectly human, there was an animal magnetism about him. You could see how people (stupid people) might fall right into his arms. 

I stood by my first assessment. He was a trust fund baby from the biggest crime family there was; entropy in a designer suit. The Devil was in my dingy office and I wasn’t sure which one of us had fallen further. 

He was smiling at me though, so I shook his hand and tried to ignore how soft his skin was and the fine lines of scars underneath my fingers. 

  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
